LEONARDO DiCAPRIO as Jay Gatsby in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures drama THE GREAT GATSBY, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO as Jay Gatsby in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures drama THE GREAT GATSBY, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Photo: Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture, Warner Bros.

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Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) attend one of the Gatsby's parties in their finest East Egg attire.

Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) attend one of the Gatsby's parties in their finest East Egg attire.

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Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Jay Gatsby and Carey Mulligan is his love interest in “The Great Gatsby.”

Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Jay Gatsby and Carey Mulligan is his love interest in “The Great Gatsby.”

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan star in Baz Luhrmann's glitzy 3-D version of "The Great Gatsby."

Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan star in Baz Luhrmann's glitzy 3-D version of "The Great Gatsby."

Photo: BE

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures, Associated Press

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Party scene from "The Great Gatsby" directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Party scene from "The Great Gatsby" directed by Baz Luhrmann.

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Photo: Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture, Associated Press

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, left, and Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan in a scene from "The Great Gatsby."

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, left, and Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan in a scene from "The Great Gatsby."

Photo: Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture, AP

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Photo: Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture, Associated Press

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson, standing left, Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, standing right, Adelaide Clemens as Catherine, seated from left, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Kate Mulvany as Mrs. McKee in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Jason Clarke as George Wilson, left, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, center, and Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, right, in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Jason Clarke as George Wilson, left, Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, center, and Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, right, in a scene from "The

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures, Associated Press

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, left, in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, left, in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Photo: Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture, Associated Press

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Photo: Courtesy Of Warner Bros. Picture, Associated Press

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This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures, Matt Hart)

This film publicity image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan in a scene from "The Great Gatsby." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures, Matt Hart)

Photo: Matt Hart, Associated Press

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Review: 'The Great Gatsby'

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Baz Luhrmann's “The Great Gatsby” isn't the “Gatsby” that I've always had in mind, and it probably isn't yours. Nor is it some definitive cinematic “Gatsby” that will stand the test of time. In 25 years, much of it will look dated and ridiculous — some of it looks ridiculous today.

Yet it's a valid “Gatsby,” an idiosyncratic but conscientious adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald masterpiece, and it deserves to stand as the cinematic “The Great Gatsby” for this generation.

Put simply, the good outweighs the bad, and it does so because Luhrmann doesn't use the novel as a mere pretext for his visual invention, something that the movie's previews — and Luhrmann's track record (“Romeo + Juliet”) — might have led you to expect. He and co-screenwriter Craig Pearce find their angle on “Gatsby” from within Fitzgerald's text and, through careful consideration, find their way around the challenges of adapting this novel.

These challenges are twofold. The first is that, in the book, we only see the lead character, Jay Gatsby, through the eyes of a less interesting character, Nick Carraway, the young bond trader who becomes his neighbor one summer. The elusiveness and fascination of Gatsby depends on that distance, and yet distance can be hard to justify on screen.

The second is that most of the appeal of the book is in the beauty of its prose, which can't be communicated in pictures.

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Luhrmann and company get around this by embracing the peculiarities of the novel and making them a virtue. The big addition to the text, which Fitzgerald purists may initially recoil from, is that the story is told from the vantage of December 1929. The stock market has crashed, and Nick (Tobey Maguire) is being treated by a psychiatrist for alcoholism. He talks about the one man who didn't disappoint him (Gatsby), and later starts committing his memories to paper.

As additions go, that's not bad. The alcoholism, the looking back on a short distance of time as though through the veil of history, the Crash as a metaphor for all sorts of crashes, social and personal — all this is in the Fitzgerald vein. But the main benefit of this obvious device is that it establishes Nick as the audience's eyes and ears, and allows for Fitzgerald's words, through Nick's narration, to filter their way through the entire film.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a more vulnerable Gatsby than Robert Redford in Jack Clayton's “The Great Gatsby,” made in 1974, the year DiCaprio was born. But if you go back to the book, he is more in the spirit of Fitzgerald's creation.

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The Great Gatsby

Quick take: A valid, if a bit off-center, take on a literary masterpiece.

Like Gatsby, DiCaprio has a beautiful façade, and he looks very much of the era. His smile is as magnetic, approving and reassuring as the one the author describes, and yet at the same time you see that he is a striver, that his accent is affected, and that he is the grip of a dream that makes him, at heart, weak.

He is in love with a vision of his past, a woman that he can't have, who represented the pinnacle of achievement back when he had nothing — and whose absence makes him feel that he still has nothing, despite having everything.

The only thing odd about DiCaprio is that he can't seem to say “old sport,” which is what Gatsby calls everybody. Instead, he seems to be saying “old spore,” as though talking to fungus.

There are other little flaws. Jay-Z on the soundtrack isn't awful, but he doesn't help; nor do scenes profit from being underscored by Beyoncé singing “Crazy in Love” in a syncopated, '20s-inflected arrangement.

A fireworks show to the accompaniment of Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue” is a clumsy lift out of Woody Allen's “Manhattan,” as well as an anachronism that Fitzgerald would never have allowed. If Fitzgerald set a book in 1922 and mentioned a piece of music being played, you can bet that music is not only from that year but from that month in 1922. “Rhapsody in Blue,” from 1924, would be unthinkable.

But these are minor irritations, easily ignorable because so much else is in the right mood.

Harder to overlook is the miscasting of Carey Mulligan as the undying object of Gatsby's fascination, Daisy Buchanan. Mulligan is simply too drippy and melancholic to charm the audience, much less Gatsby, given his love of dazzling circumstances.

At the same time, Mulligan's screen essence is one of probity and integrity, which is, to put it mildly, not Daisy. Mulligan muscles through it. She's a good actress and gives us something in place of the character, but for the film, it's a missed opportunity.

The 3-D is unnecessary, and yet interesting, providing some of the early scenes an odd look, as though the film were originally shot in black and white, then colorized, and then rendered in three dimensions. The effect is that of seeing old photographs suddenly reanimated.

In constructing the visual spectacle, Luhrmann is highly aware of the present in the past, and the past in the present. In his filming of Gatsby's weekend bashes, he mashes up the music and styles of the early Twenties and 2013, so that modern audiences can feel directly what those parties meant in that time — sex, abandon, the height of decadence, the apex of glamour.

Everyone is young in the movie, or looks young, and that's another virtue. Fitzgerald wrote the novel in his late 20s, and the story was all about the deep longing for the past that can be experienced even when very young. I think he would have liked Luhrmann's “Gatsby.”

Fitzgerald could be surprisingly prudish, and there are things here that would probably make him tear his hair out, but taken all together, I think he'd see it: The film's romance and spirit are his, and what a glorious thing to find both still thriving all these years later.